L2

I started the workout very late. I had a long day at work, trying to cram all the week’s interactions with my people into one day. I will be out on travel tomorrow. Just a day trip over to Prague (2 hour drive). And after dinner, my sons were quizzing me about computers and programming, so I showed them the Sonic Pi program on the Raspberry Pi. It’s a simple integrated development environment to program sounds. A kind of synthesizer software that teaches you to program. One of my sons plays guitar, so he know chords, and soon we were trying to program chords.

Still, I was determined to get a 5x1500m in. I know these workouts are always hard after an exhausting business trip, so I aimed at 1:52 average pace. Somehow, I went slightly faster in the first. I got tired, but I had a good rhythm and just kept going. After the second interval I shifted the stroke rate up a little and that turned out to be a good move. I didn’t have difficulty hitting 1:50 pace consistently, and that in itself was a huge motivation.

So, very glad I finished this workout. And when I look at my scores from 2 seasons ago, when I did a strict Wolverine plan, it’s a pretty good average pace. My fastest 5x1500m from that winter was 1:49.9 pace.

The PM gave an average of 1:50.2. I believe something is wrong with the average reported in the second interval. Also, the heart rate graph seems a little weird. I had was wearing the Bluetooth HR belt and had the feeling the PM was lagging behind. The values on the Garmin watch (connected over the ANT protocol) seemed more reliabe.

And here are the metrics charts. I leave the interpretation as an exercise to the reader. It is quite evident what is going on.

I was also recording heart rate in parallel on the Garmin. I am making progress on Data Fusion for rowsandall.com. I may publish some sneak preview screenshots in a separate post over the weekend. Then we can see if the Garmin recorded different heart rate values.

I got to see the sunrise today. That was a really nice reward for having to get up really early. I had the alarm clock at 5am, because my work schedule wouldn’t allow me to train in the evening (business dinner) and to do a session before work, I needed to push off the dock a lot earlier than my usual, relaxed morning sessions at 7am.

Pushed off at 5:53. Things take a bit longer at the rowing club when you’re the first one there, have to unlock doors, etc.

I knew this would be a hard session. In this mesocycle I am doing one or two of these “hard endurance” or “L2” sessions a week. After a summer of sprinting and then letting my fitness degrade, my body hates these sessions. I know it will get used to it, but right now I would prefer any short and sprinty stuff over this. Both types of hard sessions are painful, but I am not mentally prepared for the “long hard distance” pain that sets in slowly but drains you long before you have the end of the session in sight.

So I am allowing myself pretty long rest periods between the intervals, gradually shortening these rests as the weeks go by, to be ready to do a 6km race in October. Today’s session was a classical Pete Plan (Wolverine Plan) session: 3km / 2.5km / 2km at 5 minutes rest. But on the water, each 500m takes 20 seconds longer, so this is actually harder than OTE.

I wanted to do the intervals with increasing stroke rate. The race pace will be 28/29spm, but I cannot do that right now, so my plan was to do the 3km at 25spm, and then increase by 1spm with each interval.

After a 2.2km warming up I turned the boat at the northwest end of the lake and took off.

I don’t fully agree with the weather report, though. I think the wind speed is pretty accurate. The kind of headwind that you feel, but you (wrongly) get the impression that it doesn’t help you much in the tailwind parts. I took the liberty to change the wind bearing from 39 degrees (NE) to 340 degrees (NNW). I felt that this was a straight head/tail wind with no crosswind. Wind direction is a very local thing, especially in hilly country.

My HR meter seems to misbehave in the second and third interval. Perhaps it’s time to replace the Wahoo Tickr’s battery. You can also see from the graph and from the data that I was a bit more conservative with the stroke rate than the plan. I really was afraid I would give up the session. The distances seemed long. In the end I managed, even without too much stroke counting. Counting strokes for 3000m seems demotivating to me, so I rather pick landmarks and divide the interval in sections. Pass the Lodni Sporty Rowing club. Pass the playground. Pass the slight turn. The restaurant. Rokle. That’s three km divided in 5 sections that are not equally long, but each of them is short enough to be manageable.

When counting, I started to practice something I saw an American Olympic sculler do in a video. She counts ten strokes. Then she doesn’t count for two strokes. Then ten strokes again. Of course you count two strokes, but it nicely disconnects the series of ten. Ten strokes always seems doable, and by separating the strings of ten, I tend to focus more on the ten itself then if it is the third set of ten out of 11 sets of ten. I am not sure if I am expressing myself clearly, but you should try it.

I used to count like this: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-2-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-3-2-3-… etc. I would know exactly where I was, and I would in general be frustrated by seeing that after 50 strokes the meters countdown was less than 500m.

Now I count: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 nothing nothing 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 nothing nothing etc … and by some magic the meters seem to go by faster. Try it. It might work for you as well.

Power estimation and wind corrected pace. I have to correct the y axis on the pace chart to show the equivalent erg pace. Still, very much in line with what I would expect to do on the erg.

The day started in an interesting way. I woke up at three, and couldn’t fall asleep again. Some work related issues, and such.

Drove to work early. Control light on dashboard alerted me that my headlight needed replacement.

Fine. I wanted to test that new Volvo shop in town anyway. This would be a nice simple thing, to check them out, and casually get a quote on some bigger repairs that I need to do.

I was welcomed by a “easy on the eye” blonde young lady. Offered coffee and some Swedish pastry. Got to admire a beautiful white Volvo 1800S in the showroom:

Yes, this car

The friendly head mechanic took my car keys and promised to change the bulb in 10 minutes.

I waited 30 minutes. He came back to apologize. The light wouldn’t work. They were checking the cabling. Had already tried exchanging the left and right bulbs and other parts.

I agreed to leave the car there and they gave me a lift to work. Again, I casually mentioned the planned repairs and that I was interested in a quote.

A busy day at work. Lots of meetings. I didn’t drink enough water and too much coffee.

End of the day I called the shop. They apologized lengthily, saying that it was a mystery. The mechanic had spent the entire day trying to figure out what was wrong, but couldn’t find the culprit.

I need the car repaired soon. Should I pick it up and drive to the competition? Decided to give them one more day. See how they cope. I hope my car is not a training project for an unexperienced mechanic.

The session was the dreaded 3km/2.5km/2km waterfall. I have mixed results on this one. The door in my erg room has a record of a 1:51.0 average on slides (and on the rowing club, with people walking around behind my erg). The last session (this fall) was a 1:52.9 average. Decided to go for improving that. An “uninspired, grumpy Monday” approach to the session.

Averages were 248W/249W/250W for the 3000/2500/2000m respectively. That boils down to a 1:52.0 average (according to the PM) and a 1:51.9 average according to my spreadsheet.

It was hard work, but it wasn’t impossible. I think about this session as a “longish 6k with breaks” so I kept telling myself that pulling 1:52 was slower than my recent 6k. That helped me through the hard parts.

Perhaps I should have scheduled a rest day but this week’s work schedule works out better if I take the rest day on Wednesday. So I planned the Pete Plan waterfall for today.

Then I checked what this month’s CTC is: A 3x7min at 5 minutes rest, with standing starts. Decided to do that one. It’s shorter. 🙂 But, I don’t like time based intervals. 🙁

I wanted to try 1:49.0 pace but it was hard from rep 1. I managed 1925m so I decided to copy that for rep 2 and then max out in rep 3. I was naive. I managed rep 2 but it was harder than rep 1. Then I missed the start of rep 2 by 2 seconds, so I was looking at lousy average pace which I slowly tried to get back to 1:49.0.

Thousand meters into the third rep I almost HD’ed, then dropped pace to 1:55-1:58 for 600m, only to take it up again in the last minute to at least get the distance over 1900m.

Unfortunately, my notebook went into sleep mode during the second rep. The reason, I discovered later, was that I didn’t push the plug into the power socket deep enough.

Here’s the data I have.

Some more pictures have surfaced from the race.

Also, the Czech rowing site Veslo.cz published an interview with our recordman Jiri Pfeifer:

I translate a few interesting bits:

How did the race go?

“The race in Pardubice went according to expectations. After a relatively fast 500m I found myself in second place behind Jan Vesecky, who started in a younger age category, so no stress. I tried to hold an average of 1:35, which I succeeded in at a stroke rate of 28-29spm. I expected that at this pace I would gradually come closer to Jan, just as in the December race in Hostivice. At the start of the last 500m my average pace was 1:35.2, and I thought: You cannot spoil such a well opened race. I tried to ignore the pain and only concentrated at getting the average pace under 1:35. I felt tired from Tuesday, but I tried not to think abouot that. In the end it was more a question of willpower than fitness. In Hostivice, I didn’t know I could row 6:20.5, but now I really wanted to go under 6:20.

Your time was indeed faster than the 6:20.5 that you mentioned. Then, your time could not be an official record because of your birth year (1966). So did you look for a revanche? You must have been disappointed in December.

Yes, I was disappointed in December, because I was allowed to start in the 50-59 age class. I had no idea that I would not qualify for a record. If I had started in the 40-49 age category, then I would know I could not change the record (5:46.1 by Vaclav Chalupa).

[…]

My record will surely fall soon. Next year, Vaclav Chalupa will be 50, and we shouldn’t forget the president of the Czech Rowing Association, Dusan Machacek, who is also from 1966 and will definitely try to break my record.

[…]

What is your profession? Do you have other hobbies?

I own a transport company. I have no time for other hobbies. I train in the morning, then quickly to work, and if I don’t come home too late, I do another training before going to bed.

In a comment to yesterday’s blog, Greg Smith of Quantified Rowing fame encouraged me to follow my dreams. I guess even in my dreams my wishes are relatively small, like in a song by Daniel Landa. Here are English lyrics in my bad English translation:

I am grateful for the chance
that there is heaven after life
where they give you a dry blanket
and maybe they have nice trees there
and clean toilets, I would appreciate those

The song is about a guy waiting to be rescued after a car accident. That’s a slightly more serious situation than being uncomfortable during an erg session. Still I can very much relate to feeling lucky with a dry blanket, dry socks, clean toilets …

The day started with another bike ride to work. It was cold initially, but after 10 minutes it was OK. Strava tells me I broke my record for Na Lesnou nadrazi (towards Lesna railway station). I know exactly why. At Kralovo Pole railway station, another cyclist entered from the park and rode in front of me. On the Strava segment Za Kociankou which is a “false flat”, I passed him, which meant that on the climb to the Lesna station I had to stay in front of him.

In the afternoon, I left the bike at work and took the train home. After dinner it was time for the dreaded Wolverine/Pete Plan Waterfall session: 3km, 2.5km, 2km at 5 minutes rest.

After a 2km warming up with some “speed” bursts (at 24spm, 28spm and 30spm), I started. Knowing the Handle Down risk, I took the 3km very conservatively. As a precaution, I also played one of my favorite erg music lists, Rowbeats #1, which has quite the right rhythm for L2 sessions, enabling you to forget that you still have 2230m to go and just take it stroke after stroke on the beat of the music.

I also started the 2.5km carefully. I usually give up a session somewhere at the beginning of the second interval. About a kilometer into the 2.5km I lost the fear and started to pull. The final 2km was fun.

Flying to Toulouse, this time through Zurich. A grandiose view on the Alps during the Fokker 100 flight from Zurich to Toulouse. Never boring.

In meetings all afternoon and evening. No training.

Tuesday

Up early after a night in a too warm hotel room. Couldn’t get the climate control to start cooling. Couldn’t open the window. I chose this hotel only because of the gym and C2 erg. Not sure if I will stay with this.

It was very warm in the gym as well but I wanted to finish a 4x2km session this time. This meant that, after a 2km warming up, I started conservatively, at 1:55 pace, with a 1:55 pace boat. I rowed the first 2km flat, with a few fast pace intervals when there was someone passing. The second to fourth row I changed strategy. I started with 10 strong strokes, then flat at 1:55, then a ten strokes push at the 1km mark, and rowing the final 500m a bit faster. In the last interval I wanted to be under 7:30, and succeeded.